


All of You to Me

by Akaiba



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Mentions of Alcohol Abuse, PTSD, mentions of sexy times, rushed ask fic from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 06:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akaiba/pseuds/Akaiba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: You asked for stucky prompts and I have come to help! Could you write a fic where Steve asks Bucky if he could draw him with his new arm because Bucky used to be the thing that took up most of Steve napkin doodles, sketch books, and mindless drawings so why would now be any different right? But Bucky doesnt want Steve to draw him now because he feels as if the arm makes him ugly and ruined, disgusting even. Please and thank you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	All of You to Me

**Author's Note:**

> I rushed it but god these two won't even let me proof read. Ugh. So many Stucky feels.

Steve isn’t sure where the fascination comes from. He sure has had more than his fair share of up close meetings with that metal arm of Bucky’s, and he can remember the reverberations it sent through him as it slammed into his shield, but it’s still interesting. It’s horrible, too. All the power it wields, the unnatural strength it can tear metal like paper and the things Steve can guess that arm has done when Bucky was tied tighter than a marionette.

He doesn’t think Bucky is ashamed of it. He makes no moves to hide it or cover it unnecessarily. Bucky’s shamed faced and stoic, found often glaring at the bottom of a whiskey glass, but he doesn’t seem apologetic for the limb. Not that Steve would think he should be; if anything Steve wants to apologise to Bucky that this was ever done to him, the he wasn’t strong enough to reach him, that he let him fall. They’d tried to have that conversation, once. Bucky had told him to stop and Steve hadn’t, had kept running his mouth until that glinting metal fist slammed against the wall by his head.

Shield tends to make things as structurally sound as they can, allowing for superhuman strength where possible, but there’s still a fist shaped crater in that wall that Fury had given Bucky another psych eval for.

Bucky doesn’t like it when Steve apologises for things he sees as his own mistakes. Even with that realisation Steve still sees that Bucky uses that metal arm… like an arm. A weapon too, when needed, but mostly Steve gets lost watching him pour coffee with it, watching him fold clothes and lift his cutlery. Bucky catches him watching sometimes and Steve always glances away, thinking it was rude to stare, but the one time he kept looking Bucky followed his gaze to the arm. He looked down at it’s smooth surface and there was a heavy, weighted stillness. Steve expected him to get angry, to hide it and rail at Steve for looking. Bucky did none of that. He simply didn’t look at Steve for the rest of the day.

Steve isn’t sure where the request comes from but he’s a liar if he says he hasn’t been thinking about it a lot. Heck, he’s got scribbles in his sketchbook from the first time he saw Bucky again.

"Would you let me draw you?"

Bucky looks up from where he’s reading through some Shield files. They aren’t letting him do missions yet- if ever, if Fury isn’t satisfied- but they are welcoming his intel so long as Steve vouches for him. Bucky shifts, not uncomfortable, but like he isn’t sure why Steve is asking. “You draw me all the time. Hell, you draw everythin’.” He mutters offhand, looking back down at the folder and Steve follows the way the metal fingers carefully run over the pages, how they gently grip the corner and turn so softly. There’s not a mark on the page, proving that the arm handles perfectly under Bucky’s control.

"I meant your… your arm." Steve doesn’t miss the way that, even after all the curious looks everyone gives the appendage, that is something that makes Bucky stiffen. "It felt rude not to ask."

The silence is heavy and damning, Steve becoming very aware he’s made a mistake and Bucky is not at all okay with the request. The blonde opens his mouth to snatch back the words and try and salvage this before Bucky storms off and Steve has to spend the night worried out his mind and searching bars for his friend.

Eventually, Bucky speaks. “No.”

Steve is relieved and crushed all at once, glad that the man is calmly and rationally handling things that anger and upset him instead of breaking things, but disappointed all the same. His mouth opens to ask why but he stops and clicks his jaw shut instead. He nods compliantly.

"Okay." Steve’s learned not to push. He’s spent his entire life pushing; pushing at the world to not write him off, to take him seriously and to make it better. But he can’t push Bucky or he’ll lose him. Bucky is like one of those beaten dogs they used to see in the alleys; at once broken and scared but feral, wild and unpredictable. The only reason Bucky is allowed to share Steve’s apartment is because the only thing Shield or the world has to keep Bucky grounded is Steve.

They don’t talk about the arm for another two weeks. Bucky glares now when he catches Steve looking, a hard, hurt look and his flesh hand pressing over the metal. Now… now he’s hiding it. Still no shame, just uncertainty and suspicion like he can’t understand why Steve has to look or what the blonde super soldier could find so fascinating.

It’s four am when it’s brought up again. Steve had gone to bed with Bucky working his way through a bottle of something amber and probably whiskey, the evidence of which is on his breath when he stomps into Steve’s room and wakes him roughly.

"Why do you want to draw it?" Bucky demands, his angry scowl all Steve can see as the world comes into focus.

"Huh?"

"This metal arm, this thing, Steve." Bucky snaps. "Why?"

"I just… I just do?" Steve hazards, rubbing his eyes of sleep and he is so vulnerable like this. He could still handle Bucky in nothing but his sleeping pants if the other snapped but the trust he has that Bucky won’t hurt him, that he can rub his eyes and not even look at Bucky and the other man will do nothing at all but watch. Sometimes Bucky tells him that it pisses him off, seeing how much Steve trusts him and how little he seems to care that Bucky is a monster. Other times, when the whiskey won’t stop the memories or the nightmares, when they’re curled into the same bed like the heat going out back in Brooklyn, Bucky will tell Steve that it’s the only thing that keeps him trying; Steve’s faith that Bucky is still a good man.

"Bullshit, Rogers." Bucky snarls but all Steve hears is the creak of the metal, the gears as they whir and grind. His eyes are dropping to it before he can think but where he’s half expecting this to escalate Bucky goes rigid again but doesn’t move.

Steve sighs. “I’m sor-“

"Just answer the damn question." Still stood still, both hands clenched, but controlled. So very, very controlled. Steve’s so proud.

America’s favourite super soldier shrugs. “I just… it’s part of you.” He gestures over the small pile of papers and napkins, the sketchbooks and the various sized pencils. “I’ve drawn every other part of you, why not that?” It’s the first time they’ve acknowledged it, the things that happen on those nights Bucky crawls into bed with Steve. The lights are always off and come morning Bucky is back in his own room if he’s in the apartment at all. Bucky looks taken aback, comfortable with the arrangement that it happens, they like it and they don’t think or talk about it. Well, Bucky might not think about it. It takes up far too much of Steve’s thoughts.

The brunet looks like he wants to make a snarky comment about Steve having dirty nude drawings of him but his throat bobs and no sounds come out. He’s dealing with what he can at any given time, the psychiatrist had told Steve gently. Be patient and don’t push. Steve clings to that when he’s so very tempted to. To push Bucky to give this a name, to give them a name. Bucky swallows hard and instead says, “It is not a part of me.” It’s spit out, gathering strength and venom with each syllable. “It is a hunk of metal that they fused to me to make me a weapon.” Bucky’s flesh hand goes to the upper of his metal arm, not hiding this time as his blunt nails scrape a little at the surface like he can tear it away. There’s anger and disgust in Bucky’s face as he looks at Steve but none of it is directed at the blonde and it makes his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. All of that hate is directed inwards. The shame Steve hasn’t seen is so deep, so festered in loathing and self-disgust, and so very deep that Bucky can keep it all to himself. It’s only Steve’s request to draw it that dragged it all up for him to share.

Don’t push, don’t push; Steve repeats to himself. He wants to snarl back at Bucky, wants to push him against the wall and shake him until he understands that none of what was done to him was his fault, none of the things they made him do are his burden to carry. That arm is not a cross to bear. He takes a slow breath but carefully keeps eye contact, so wary that he might misstep here. “It’s just an arm, Buck.” He says softly.

"It’s a wea-"

"A weapon, yeah, you said. But… I guess, so am I, really." Steve shrugs. Bucky blinks and he looks like he’s about to make a sarcastic, acidic remark but Steve can’t help but notice that tension has bled out of him at the idea that Steve might need comfort. He doesn’t, but he is warmed to know that the underfed, smart-mouthed guy that looked after him when he got sick in winter so many years ago is still in there. "I was made to be, anyway. But it’s all in how you use it." He could make comparisons to Tony and Bruce and even Natasha about their own weapons and how they carry and use them but he doesn’t think making Bucky’s issues seem small would be helpful in any way. "You can be pretty gentle with it when you want."

The lax fingers clench again when Steve looks at the metal arm. Two references to the ‘things that definitely do not happen in the dark’ and Steve’s not got a hand wrapped around his throat and Bucky is still in the room. He likes to think that this is progress.

"You’re an idiot." Bucky spits. It’s the calmest reaction Steve hadn’t expected at all and it makes him smile warmly.

"Yeah. I am."

"Ugh, don’t- don’t do that, you-" There’s no tension in Bucky at all. Frustration, sure, and he doesn’t seem at all on better terms with his metal arm but Steve’s pretty certain that the shadows that plague Bucky have been chased away for a moment and he’s more bothered with how much of a sap his friend is. "You giant dork, just stop smiling at me like you-" Steve’s heart races and he aches to fill the gap in. ‘Like I love you?’ but Bucky can feel it too and there’s fear and self-loathing in his face so Steve says nothing, not yet. Don’t push. After a moment Bucky slumps and sits at the foot of the bed, bare feet sprawling over the blanket and between Steve’s under the blanket. "Fine. You wanna draw it, fine. Go ahead." He grumbles.

Steve blinks at him, a broad smile on his face that falters when Bucky waves the metal limb at him. “Huh?”

"Well? You wanted to draw it." Bucky rolls his eyes.

"What, now?" America’s golden boy glances at the alarm clock and it is still just before sunrise but Bucky hasn’t slept at all.

"Yeah, now, Rogers."

Steve obligingly fetches his sketchbook and draws. It’s awkward at first, Bucky shifting uncomfortably with Steve’s constant curious, endless looking and the scratch of his pencil the only sound except their breathing. But Bucky is tired, and not a little inebriated. He gets bored and imperiously makes himself comfortable in the spare side of Steve’s bed that Steve has privately dubbed ‘Bucky’s side’. The brunet drifts off but Steve keeps drawing. He fills five pages before his stomach rumbles and he decides he should make them breakfast, even if he reckons Bucky won’t be getting up before midday.

They don’t talk about it but things seem a little easier. Bucky is back to being not bothered by Steve’s curious looks, even seems to tolerate his curious touches when they’re ‘doing things that don’t happen’. Steve pretends not to notice when certain sketches go missing, always the ones with Bucky’s face and the ones that show how Steve sees him. If they help, Steve will let Bucky take as many as he likes. Steve doesn’t push and Bucky figures everything out on his own, seeming to maybe agree just a little that his arm isn’t only a weapon when they’re tumbling about in bed. Steve tries not to say ‘I told you so’ but his face must have given something away if the way Bucky attacks his neck is anything to go by.

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr: http://akaiba.tumblr.com/


End file.
